Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether her Department has made an assessment of (a) the safeguarding impact of children being featured in promotional or marketing content associated with adult-content businesses, and (b) the potential merits of changes to legislation, regulation or guidance relating to this.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is the independent regulator responsible for regulating advertising in the UK, through codes set by the Committees of Advertising Practice (CAP) and Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP). The government is not involved in these codes, nor in the investigations and enforcement delivered by the ASA.

The advertising codes contain specific rules that set out that marketing communications addressed to, targeted directly at or featuring children must contain nothing that is likely to result in their physical, mental or moral harm. The ASA has previously ruled on such cases asking the advertiser to no longer show the advert or to amend content before it is shown again. Making any changes to the codes would be a matter for the CAP and BCAP committees.